Lots Of Good News From Rafa’s Press Conference

Rafa Benitez has given his press conference today for the match against Barnsley tomorrow night and most of it was good news.

Good news that Rafa thinks the lads are playing well and good news on the injury front with Jamaal Lascelles, Matt Ritchie and Daryl Murphy all fit again.

Rafa even had a word to say about Rob Elliot’s return to full time training and that he is making good progress and he should be ready in two or three weeks time.

Rafa Benitez at press conference Jonjo Shelvey came in for some praise too because of his attitude, which has always been a bit of a problem for the 24 year-old in the past.

But hopefully he is getting past that on his way (hopefully) to being coached by Rafa into becoming a great player for Newcastle United in the future.

Nobody has ever doubted Jonjo’s natural ability which is simply immense as he showed on Saturday.

These are the expanded comments for Rafa’s press conference today:

“It’s a feeling that we have confidence in the things we are doing at the moment.”

“I have told the players this is a very dangerous game. It is a team that plays with high tempo.”

“We can’t go there over-confident believing we will win because the other teams are scoring goals, not conceding too many.”

“But they are dangerous because they are scoring goals.”

“Every player in every team has to realise that if they don’t play, the must keep working hard to change the manager’s mind. Karl was training well, Matz (Sels) is training well now.”

“The competition is good for the team. They are professional, but if they have to be ready to do well.”

“I can understand any player not playing will be disappointed, but they have to respect the team-mates. They have to be sure they keep working hard and be ready when they are needed.”

“A lot of teams have put a midfielder close to Shelvey, but for me he is doing well. “I am pleased with the attitude, the way he is working with the attitude.”

“If we are just depending on Jonjo then we are in trouble, though. The rest of the team has to do well, if he is not playing well then the other players have to do well and manage the game without him.”

“Daryl Murphy has completed a full training session. Rob Elliot has trained with the keepers, Jamaal Lascelles and Matt Ritchie are both fine.”

“You never know, but Rob is doing well. In two or three weeks he will be fine. He is doing well. I watched him a few days ago and he is fine.”

“Good progress.”

Wins are what are going to get us promoted this season, so let’s hope we can win this game against The Tykes tomorrow night at Oakwell.

Then we will face Ipswich Town on Saturday at home and we could even make it five wins in a row by then.

Competition for places and success on the pitch is hopefully forcing players to recover that little bit faster than they previously did. When the team was doing badly it seemed that one or two players hid away in the recovery room and knew that when they came back they’d be put right back into the team. That’s no longer the case and we’re all the better for it. Long may it continue 🙂

Hibbett, not sure it was that high, but you’re right in that a lot weren’t prepared to give him a chance before passing judgement on him. How wrong they were. The difference though is that we’d seen Sissoko for a number of seasons and were in a great place to judge his ability. With Clark it was just people believing what bitter Villa fans had to say. ?

Essex / Paul…It would have been interesting to see the difference to injuries without the training ground improvements. I do feel that a lot of the previous issues were psychological, as Paul alludes to.

There is desire and intent now, which is infectious. People want to be part of it.

Not saying that I’m not happy we have upgraded the facilities mind. Just that it’d be interesting to gauge how much of it was what.

Injuries happen to all sports teams in all leagues. Coaching techniques and training grounds do play a role, but so does luck. Hopefully our good fortune is more of the former than the latter and it will continue throughout the season.

I agree with everything you said and the use of the word luck is too amorphous I just use it to define those situations that are undefinable. I have seen teams that have had a good string of healthy squads, only to be followed by a string of utter destruction. I do strongly believe that proper attitude and training techniques do influence for the positive, but I also believe that today’s science could be tomorrows problem.

My mate’s grandson is going to the 9 bar to watch the stream from Barnsley free. He reckons Cric Sports. I have found FirstRowSports great, watched Wales v Georgia, Huddersfield v Sheff Wed and Toon away v Rotherham, on advice of Firebug666. That lad has the golden touch!

Ya Nah, imo I couldn’t care less about what happened last season re injuries etc. We are entering a new era under Rafa, he has made lots of positive changes, has the fans back onside and dare I say united? Well most anyway, The team is coming together and doing well and they don’t seem to be living on ego’s and false camaraderie.

I have said in the past that you need to look backwards to go forwards, re fixing mistakes etc that the club never got right anyway.

Now we don’t need to look backwards, (unless to gloat over some of our recent results), Rafa has everyone focused on the future, and suddenly we look like we could go places.

So promotion and maybe even a cup are no longer just pipe dreams, they are something we now have the ability to achieve.

Watching on periscope and the unsynched radio broadcast, really makes you appreciate the professional broadcast no matter how much we hate some of the commentary and the camera looking at the wrong place at the wrong time

i did mate i live in open country and just after midnight it was like daylight nature is a wonderful thing helps to puts things into perspective makes you realise how small a dot we are in the scheme of things

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I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in February 2017 and completed four months of chemotherapy in late July and will continue to have hormone treatment.

The cancer spread in the bones but it has been stabilized and has not spread further.

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Stage 4 cancer is not curable so I will continue to have cat scans and bone scans every four months to ensure the cancer is not spreading.

It is as it is - these things happen - and I will do my very best under the circumstances.

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